I want Nintendo to do something really different with the Wii U versions of their first party games, it should be capable of providing Skyrim-like depth to a Zelda game for instance. I hope there's more too it than just the touchscreen controller as a selling point.

On that topic I'm really curious to hear the whole AT teams thoughts on how much we can say about the performance of the Wii U, we know that it has a typical gaming power draw of 45w and peak of 75w, 1GB RAM reserved for the OS (odd) and 1GB (shared) available to games and likely 32MB of eDRAM cache similar to the 360. Apart from those things we only have rumors to go on, the GPU seems likely to be an RV7** derivative, although some more recent rumors said the embedded E6760. The CPU is more of a mystery, IBM recently retracted statements that said it was Power7 based, instead calling it only "power based" and apologizing for the past reference error. We also know it is 45nm, like the 360 Slim CPU now is. With only a max of 75 watts to work with the CPU is probably constrained to 25 or so, I think.

So what I'm wondering is, would a modern Power architecture under such low power draw be able to significantly outperform the processors in the PS360? Even compared to the slim versions of either, it has less power to work with, less chassis space for cooling, and on the same manufacturing process. The consensus from developers seems to be that the GPU is significantly better than the old consoles but the CPU is holding things back, some even say it's weaker than the 360. But then, maybe they need to get used to it like they did for the Cell, although I don't think it's that far-out an architecture this time.

After the first few minutes (love the game talk!) I definitely like what you did with the sound. It is much better and almost sounds like you were all in the same room. I hope it stays that way! Thanks! :DReply

I would actually recommend against Ian's advice for side-quests in Borderlands 2. Borderlands has a weird way of determining your reward for a quest... it's purely based on what level you were when you picked up the quest. Even if the enemies have leveled up with you, you will still get an old award. So, people highly recommend to *avoid* side-quests in play-through 2 until you beat the game the second time.

I was a bit interested in the purple haze iPhone 5 talk, but I came away rather disappointed. I've noticed the odd purple hue to all lens flares when compared to my other mobile devices (iPad 2, ASUS TF300), and I've been hoping that someone would explain what about the iPhone 5 would cause it to have a purple hue to its lens flares. Brian, would you mind ringing in on this? There are some Anandtech forum users that would certainly appreciate a good explanation!Reply

I think it's good to keep in mind that it also depends on whether you care about the reward as well. Some rewards don't really change, so it might not matter. For example, I don't care if the Bane SMG is level 40 or 50... I'm NEVER going to use that gun.

As a warning, you may want to ensure your speakers are at a suitable volume. ;)

Also, some quests don't have an item reward, and it might be easier to complete then with the mobs below your level. Since you played the original Borderlands, I'm sure you remember how difficult the Circle of Duty quest line was in play-through 2.

In regard to the play-through mechanic portion of the podcast, I'm becoming a bit tired of the whole play-through aspect of gaming. In some ways, I think Diablo III really ruined it with requiring the players to go play through the game three times just to reach the "true difficulty." Although, I've honestly never been the player that plays a game more than once just for fun. Fortunately for me, Runic Games was kind enough to simply allow us to specify the difficulty in Torchlight II.Reply

Your podcasts are very well done as far as not talking over each other much and the flow of the conversations. It would be cool if we could get some video as well, otherwise you guys do a great job. I appreciate all the hard work you have to do in order for all of this to come together. However, could you link to podcasts on your main links up top, your header I guess. Reply

To me it came across like a rant from an iPhone fan. I'm no professional photographer but I've taken thousands of photos and have never had any photos, using a cellphone or point and shoot, come out with a purple tinge no matter how I hold the camera.Reply

I really enjoy your podcast guys, you know your audience and deliver!, There are other sites with tech podcast too but compared to this, those are more like entertainment shows really like The Verge cast or Engadget podcast. I like that you put out some very good arguments and we learn a thing or two.

It will be awesome if you could have some kind of segments within the podcast dedicated to cover stuff in details, kind of what we have on TWiT where they add things like the enterprise pick of the week, recommended reading, etc, so that your audience can learn even more.

I really liked the chat about the situation with PR relationships, no wonder why positiveness of reviews starts decreasing as days pass. It always seems like those with early access to devices like the iPhone tend to give better scores.

Running off the idea of using accelerometers to embed vector motion metadata for smartphone cameras, I thought Brian might be interested to know that the RED Epic and Scarlet camera's in their latest beta firmware builds have had their internal gyro's enabled for metadata recording. Should be some interesting results once software developers work out how to best use this data for stabilization, 3D tracking etc.Reply

I love what you talked about with the conflict of interests in the reviews. I used to read audiophile, hi-if, reviews regularly. They deal terribly with the conflict of interests, everyone knows it and the publications suffer. In the hi-if space, first of all reviews are not very scientific, second they are all so positive. They never say anything negative, you have to read between the lines, less things they have to 'swap out' or 'balance out' the better. Basically, they are awful. You know it is because there is product, and they need to review it, and also get adds. Anyway, they have lost the war and there are no objective reviews.

On the other side, the lack thereof of good reviews has kept the brick and mortar retail business alive.Reply

I'm sorry for spamming my blog post again, but I've done some power analysis on IVB a while ago, with the Core i5-3570K. At full load (OCCT+Furmark), I'm seeing 14.79W going into the IGP and 41.28W going into the CPU side of things, with a very slight undervolt.

This is on a modded system, so that power breakdown is an absolute best-case scenario, but suffice it to say that HD 4000 graphics definitely don't fit into Haswell power envelopes, so I'm expecting at least a 2X power efficiency increase with the Haswell ultrabook parts.

AMD power efficiency is well-publicized, they get around 10-12 GFLOPS/W with their 32nm parts (just behind southern islands):

Great job guys, really enjoyed listening, keep up the great work, looking forward to the iPhone 5 review, hopefully you go into the small details that haven't been discussed yet by other websites.Reply

Had some audio issues with this one, but still very entertaining. It's nice to listen to a podcast where to participants actually know what they are talking about and don't try to talk over each other in the name of entertainment.

I also wanted to throw in a thank you to Brian for saying that antennagate was in fact real and not pretending like it never happened like some other sites/podcasts out there. Reply

I think you should get Kristian on board and do an SSD episode discussing how different types of NANDs work, real life implications of different NAND types. The performance parameters of SSDs that matter in a real life context. How to pick an SSD (or a hard drive for that matter) while looking at just the benchmarks and theoretical data, etc etc.

And the sound issues from episode 6 seem to have disappeared. So an enjoyable podcast, this one.Reply

I could follow Brian and his rants despite being a telecom guy with only basic knowledge of optics... I look forward to his rants in future podcasts too, though I wonder if it would be welcome by the rest of the audience...Reply

You guys really need to do an article on Smartphone Battery Life & Performance Myths. As this podcast really showed, there are so many tech savvy people doing non-nonsensical things in their attempts to improve battery life, or performance, under Android or iOS. It's because the way these functions really work are a mystery to most of us - and mostly based on bad information gleaned on internet forums.

That's my recommendation for piece. Thanks for the enlightening podcast.Reply

I stopped listening to Podcasts years ago, but after checking out #1 of the Anandtech Podcast, I look forward to it showing up on my mobile device every week. The pairing of Anand, Brian and Ian is perfect. I can’t get enough of Brian’s fascinating explanations (and rants).

My only suggestion for improvement would be a "personal pick of the week", where you briefly talk about a (possibly obscure) hardware or software product, app or internet service that you have found useful.Reply

Thanks for doing these podcasts, I've enjoyed most of them. This one was very low signal-to-noise for me. Granted everyone likes different stuff, and apparently most people liked this, but many of the topics were just very low density, lots of repetition. I have difficulty skipping around using a portable media player while running, scrubbing through a 2 hour podcast on a 2 inch slider. Some podcasts on ITunes have the equivalent of chapters (not sure if that's what they're called). The segments I'm interested in are awesome and the ones I'm not interested in are extraordinarily long! I would love it if you guys could add chapters.Reply

While it is difficult for me to arrange one and half hour for your guys, I must admit, once I do, it is really easy to forget about the time. The technical prowess reminds me John Carmack's keynotes. And listening to Ian's and Brian's different accents even brings some entertainment value ;-).

One question about the artwork in the m4a file you upload to iTunes. Is it intentional? It has been big A for few first episodes, now it is ND :).Reply

You guys asked for comments. First I think it is very nice that you don't "overtalk" each other. Second, I like that Anand asks Brian to explain some of the technical terms he uses. And third I really did gain a greater understanding of how camera modules work and the associated shortcomings of them including the "purple haze " issue.

hi. since the first podcast i tried to listen to the podcast in firefox but no success. the player shows up for a fraction of a second and then disapears. i'm using firefox 16 but same was with 14 and 15. in ie9 it works just fine. can you do something about it?Reply

I can honestly say that listening to these podcasts is one of the best parts of my week.

Also I love how Brian goes off on tangents way above the average person's knowledge in particular fields, they're hilarious and informative at the same time. The rant about 'purplehazegate' was particularly brilliant.Reply